Waiting
by escatrequi
Summary: Aventus Aretino performs the Black Sacrament to contact the Dark Brotherhood. (Very dark.)


_A/N: This is super dark. Might be a bit OOC, but I've always thought in-game Aventus was too...not insane for a child that ordered someone else's death. _

_WARNING: May be triggering. Lots of gore and angst. _

_I would tell you to enjoy, but I don't think that's the best thing to say in this situation. _

* * *

He brings the dagger down _once, twice, three times_, stabbing the vile effigy right in the heart. The blood spurts out of the organ, coating his clothes, his face, the walls. He doesn't care. He blinks the droplets of blood out of his eye and continues impaling the effigy.

Words tear themselves from his throat, wild and wicked, "Sweet Mother, sweet Mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptised in blood and fear." His voice sounds distant and unfamiliar, even to his own ears. His mouth forms the shape of the harsh words, his tongue catching on the sharp syllables. "Sweet Mother, sweet Mother..."

The thin window - the only window - lets in a tiny sliver of light. Fragile. Light is weak. Darkness is strong. Darkness is inevitable. Darkness is _death_.

He looks down at the effigy. Surrounded by candles slowly burning out, bones are arranged in a pattern resembling a skeleton. He scavenged them from the Hall of the Dead. They once belonged to people, then those people died. Death. Inevitable. The skull stares accusingly up at him, but he ignores it. Dead people can't harm him, only living ones can.

* * *

After hours and hours and hours the light has disappeared from the window, the candles are all but stumps and his arm _aches_. He does not dare to stop. He stabs and cuts and slices and impales, never slowing. Never stopping. He carries on until he can no longer make out the shapes of the items on the floor. He makes one last attempt, striking out blindly at the effigy, before the darkness devours him.

He dreams of a mother.

* * *

The light is back, but he knows it will leave again. He rubs the Nightshade on the blade of the dagger and carries on where he left off.

* * *

He is in pain. The hunger, the thirst. Too much. He is weak, feeble like the light. He does not stop. Either Grelod dies, or he dies.

* * *

A hand on his shoulder. Mother?

_No._

* * *

He wakes to find Idesa Sadri standing over him. He opens his mouth, intending to tell her to leave, but he cannot make the words come. He can only mutter, "_Mothersweetbloodfear, mothersweetbloodfear._"

"Hush, child," she says. _Child_. He is no longer a child. "You must rest."

Magic blooms in her hands and a golden glow surrounds his body, warming him to the core. But his core is corrupted with darkness, and once the healing light fades it is back. He is cold, once again.

He is dark.

* * *

Idesa leaves, he is healed.

The effigy is still there. He lights the candles, coats the dagger and begins again.

* * *

One day he can no longer contain all of his emotions. There is a storm raging in his mind. He drives the dagger into the effigy's heart, like lightning, imagining he is shoving the blade into Grelod instead of a part of someone else's corpse.

The dagger's patterned handle leaves imprints in his skin.

* * *

The tears come now, ragged currents flowing down his cheeks as he remembers. He remembers all the punishments he and his friends had to endure.

For Runa. _Stab_. For Samuel. _Stab_. For Hroar. _Stab_. For Francois. _Stab_. For Ange, Termm, Relsic and Rheve. _Stab_. For Constance Michel. _Stab_.

_For myself._

He thinks of his mother. His real mother. Once alive and bright and beautiful, now rotting in the catacombs beneath the city. Much like the once-living shell of a corpse in front of him-

_No. No. __No, no, no no no nonono._ His mother is dead. The Night Mother is his mother now.

He cries again, and collapses on top of the skeleton. He is soaked in blood, sweat and tears.

If he closes his eyes, he can almost feel a bony finger wipe the tears from his cheeks.

* * *

It is slow at first, the anger simply smouldering embers in the bottom of his lungs. Then he takes a breath, ignites the inferno, and the flames scorch the back of his throat. It spirals out of control until he spews fire from his lips, _"Sweet Mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptised in blood and fear."_

* * *

Weeks pass. Idesa brings him food. He survives. He waits.

* * *

_I am waiting, Mother._


End file.
